


your heart is your masterpiece (and i'll keep it safe)

by AmnesicSorcerer



Category: The Body - Stephen King
Genre: Canon Compliant, Drabble, Fluff, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Mild Language, Post-Canon, gordie's a good dad fight me, i may or may not have actually written this as a final project for reading the Body in class
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:34:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22155592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AmnesicSorcerer/pseuds/AmnesicSorcerer
Summary: A year after Chris dies, Gordie's son comes home from school very upset. Gordie endeavours to show up his mom and dad by being a decent parent.
Kudos: 7





	your heart is your masterpiece (and i'll keep it safe)

**Author's Note:**

> I did write this as an assignment for a school project and I did originally only make the title what it is as a joke because I realized that it was basically fanfiction and now here I am posting my first ever fanfic because I really gosh darn like this novella and this is kind of cute?? I'm so soft for good parent-child relationships.
> 
> Title song lyrics from I'll Keep You Safe by Sleeping At Last

“Kids lose  _ everything _ unless somebody looks out for them, and if your folks are too [messed] up to do it then maybe I ought to.”

I was only twelve years old when Chris Chambers said that to me. So was he, come to think of it. All grown up now and with kids of my own, I could tell instantly when my son Benjamin walked in the door that he had lost something very precious.

His dignity? His self-worth? His shoulders were slumped, his gaze downwards. Everything was pointing inwards like a cleverly wrought origami shape. I paused in my chopping of mushrooms, and spared a brief moment to mentally apologize to my wife, who I’d told that I would prep cook, before walking to the doorway of the kitchen to watch as he took his jacket off. He hung it  _ up _ . Something was definitely wrong. He only did that when he was purposefully trying to shirk my and his mother’s attention.

_ Too bad, sucker _ .

“Hey, hotshot,” I said. He flicked his eyes up in about as much acknowledgement as it looked like I was gonna get. “Why the long face? Did you land yourself after-school detention and not get to play your game?”

Ben shook his head. “I got to play,” he said, and his face screwed up a little when he did. He swiped angrily at his eyes, and made a wordless sound that clearly expressed that he was upset, and that he was angry about it. When he’d been a toddler, he had tripped on a hike and when his older brother had kneeled to help him up, Ben had screwed up his face just like that and smacked his brother with the stick he was carrying. Gave him a scar, even.

I grunted, unsure how to tackle this, exactly. He didn’t seem to want to talk about it. But he’d lost something, and I endeavoured to be better than my own folks in helping him find it.

“Come here.” I kneeled down. A simple invitation, a pair of open arms; it was something. It was a space for him to fall apart a little, if he needed. He walked into them without a moment’s hesitation. I could feel his arms curled between my chest and his, and the quick, unhappy breaths hitching his shoulders up and down, up and down. I smoothed a hand over his hair. “Do you want to talk, or do you want me to talk?”

“You,” he mumbled against my shoulder.

“Okay,” I mused. “Okay.”

He liked my stories. No shit, most of the world seemed to, but there was a crucial difference between the stories I told the world, and those I told my children: The stories I told me children were only ever one hundred percent true. My stories, no matter what they were about, seemed to cheer Ben, like being able to see me as a fallible human being was somehow entertaining to the little shit. One in particular swam out at me just then, plucked out by thinking about Chris.

“When I was twelve, my friends and I went on a camping trip, and it was hot as--don’t tell your ma I said this--hot as the devil’s tit,” I started lightly. “We were all pourin’ out buckets, plus we were covered in dirt and ashes and cinders and grease from having slept outside the night before. The air was humid, sweating all over us. But on the second day, we found a pond. Sweet Jesus, we were excited for that pond.” I paused. For effect, of course. “Guess what was in the pond?”

“Water,” Ben said sulkily.

“Well, yes,” I admitted. “But also it had leeches.  _ Tons _ of leeches.”

“Eww.” Ben pulled back to look at me, and I grinned obnoxiously.

“Yeah, that’s what we thought too. We had two dozen, three dozen on us each. And I hate to brag, but I definitely had it the worst, because I had a humongous one the size of your entire nose,” I grabbed his nose lightly to emphasize my point, “right on my balls,” I finished amiably, releasing his nose after a hot second of eyebrow-raised staring.

“Dad! That’s so gross! Why are you telling me that?”

“Because I figure whatever happened to you today can’t be more embarrassing than the fact that my best friend--who was the toughest guy at school, I’ll have you know--threw up because of that leech, and I passed out about ten minutes later.”

“Really?” Ben asked, shuffling in the circle of my arms.

“Oh yeah,” I said. “My friends were convinced something serious was wrong, but I was just really freaked out by those bloodsuckers.”

“I don’t believe you were best friends with the toughest guy at school,” Ben said.

“Aw, why not?” I asked, startled into laughter.

“Because you’re a writer. That means you’re a nerd. And nerds aren’t friends with tough guys.”

I shrugged in lieu of answering. Ben was quiet again for a second, and then said, “I was goalie at the end of the game and let in the winning goal. Everyone was really mean about it. I don’t want to go back, not ever.”

“Oh, I see,” I said, smoothing down his hair again. “Are the guys who were mean to you, are they close to you?”

“No, not really,” Ben said, shrugging.

“Then why does their opinion matter to you?”

“Huh? Why wouldn’t it?”

“They don’t know you,” I pointed out. “If you aren’t close enough to someone to ask them to pick a leech of your balls, their opinion shouldn’t matter to you, don’t you think?”

“Please stop talking about leeches and balls,” Ben said plaintively. “I really don’t need to be thinking about that. I never needed that image in my head.”

“Okay, fine,” I said. “No more--stop shushing me--no more leeches on balls talk allowed. I get it. Anyways, I know it’s hard, and it hurts, when people are mean to you. But here’s the thing: You have to choose whose opinions are important to you and whose aren’t, because no matter what you do, you can’t please everyone. People want too many different things for that. Or you might end up doing something dumb like crossing a train trestle and almost getting creamed by a train because your timing is goddamn awful. Though to be fair, I did that with some really good friends. Maybe that metaphor doesn’t hold up.”

“Dad, you’re rambling again,” Ben said.

“So I am.” I clapped a hand onto Ben’s shoulder, standing. “I’m not stopping, either, so either lend an ear or join space cadets for a few, but whichever one you do, do it while you chop this pepper.”

Mushroom and kitchen knife now productively back in-hand, and having press-ganged my child into helping me to make up for lost time, I did continue my ramble.

“Being with people who let you--no--who  _ help _ you to become the person that you want to be is important. Everyone else is going to be moving around, having their thoughts, living their lives, and bumping up against yours, and inevitably they are gonna influence you. Their  _ opinions _ , though, those shouldn’t be what’s influencing you. If someone who only likes stories that end in the main character shooting someone and doing something dramatic like running away to join the Texas Rangers says that the ending of my story sucks because it’s realism, then am I going to rewrite the end of my story? No. There will always be people who understand you, people who  _ see _ and  _ hear _ you, and people who don’t. Keep the right ones close. You don’t have to go around dismissing everyone for not understanding you, but you don’t need to let them near your heart neither. Do you get me?”

Ben’s pepper now lay in approximately a dozen square pieces. It was a weird way to cut a pepper, but I didn’t feel like derailing to teach him the finer points of vegetal dicing. He nodded seriously, chopping one of his dozen pieces solidly in half. I nodded, too, even though he wasn’t looking at me. “I think so,” he said slowly, still focused on his pepper, “but soccer is different from writing. It’s not just the end of a story, or a genre you like or don’t. You either let the goal in or you don’t. Two plus two equals four, not three. It’s right or it’s wrong.”

“People aren’t right or wrong,” I said gently. “People aren’t nearly simple enough to be numbers and equations and right and wrong. And good friends get that. They’ll stand next to you when you pull a gun on the big kids. Hell, they’ll pull a gun on the big kids to make sure you and yours don’t get hurt. Anyways, do you want to be a professional soccer player? Last I heard you wanted to do something medicine-y… Epidemiologist?”

“Anesthesiologist,” Ben corrected. “Did you know we don’t really understand anesthesia and sometimes people just die under it? That’s whack, dad.”

“Anesthesiologist, then,” I amended. “So, do you care what those boys that were mean to you think about you?”

Ben frowned at his shrinking piece of bell pepper (he had been focusing on one bit at a time). “I still care,” he said. “But maybe not as much.”

I nodded in satisfaction. “Keep thinking on it. And I’m always willing to ramble more, or let you ramble, if you need. ‘Kay?”

“Yeah, dad,” Ben says.

“Good. Now go do whatever you want until dinner; I’ll finish the veggies.”


End file.
